School needs an Easy Button

Monday

Mar 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 24, 2008 at 12:10 PM

Costa Catholic Academy is still waiting for action from the national office supply company Staples to resolve dispute about its recycling program. In November, Costa sent in more than 200 ink cartridges, and expected the school to receive more than $700 in return. So far, they are still waiting.

Matt Hutton

Costa Catholic Academy is still waiting for action from the national office supply company Staples to resolve dispute about its recycling program.

Melinda Hutchenrider started an ink cartridge recycling program at Costa this school year, after she discovered Staples’ Recycle for Education program online. It sounded perfect to her -- you registered your school online and Staples provided a list of acceptable cartridges as well as the collection boxes, complete with prepaid shipping and affixed labels. Everybody wins, because Staples is able to refill and then resell the cartridges, and the company makes a $3 donation to the school for every eligible cartridge.

“On the surface it’s a lovely program,” she said.

So in November, Hutchenrider sent in more than 200 ink cartridges, and expected the school to receive more than $700 in return.

“We didn’t expect a lot of money, but our school is in desperate need,” Hutchenrider said. “Every fundraising avenue that lives we go after.”

But Costa has had to wait a long time for the money. According to the Recycle for Education Web site, schools should expect to hear back and receive a check the month after a shipment is received. A month went by and she heard nothing and the Web site, which allows schools to check their progress, hadn’t been updated. Hutchenrider, who had nothing put praise for the local Staples branch, said they helped her use the UPS system to track the package and confirm it had been received Nov. 27.

“They really did try here,” she said.

So in the next months, Hutchenrider began a back and forth exchange with the company, sending at least a dozen e-mails and calling the customer service line at least four times. Hutchenrider said she was told the response to the program had been overwhelming and was asked to be patient.

By this point, she began to check around with other schools to see if they had similar problems with the program. Linda Giger, who runs the recycling program at Galesburg High School, said they had used Staples’ Recycle for Education program three years ago because they were offering money, which GHS planned to use to pay for its computer monitor recycling program. As with Costa, Giger said they never received any money.

“They said give it at least 30 days, I never even heard they received it,” Giger said. “(Staples) said there was an overabundance of people doing this and they haven’t gotten through everything. I have never heard back from them, I just assumed they had lost all of my stuff. So needless to say we went back to other companies.”

After being told yet again by a Staples representative at the beginning of March to give it another 30 days, Hutchenrider decided to take her frustration public. She contacted Quad Cities 8 On Your Side, which is planning to air a piece on the situation Sunday night.

When contacted for an explanation of the problem Friday, Staples Public Relations Manager Katie Sullivan said she would check into it. In an e-mail message sent later, Sullivan said the situation had been resolved Friday.

“Thanks for reaching out to us about the Galesburg schools, Costa Catholic and Galesburg High School, and Recycle for Education. We have contacted the customers and everything has been resolved, with checks being placed in the mail today,” she wrote. “Our system tracks all of the submissions of ink cartridges through this program, but there are instances where account information is illegible or not provided, and we need the customer to contact us with their information in order to process the payment.”

Hutchenrider confirmed she had received an e-mail from Staples Friday asking for Costa’s account and tracking numbers. However, she was skeptical about a resolution. She said she has been asked for that information multiple times during her attempts to resolve the situation, but she still has to start the process all over again after more time goes by without receiving a payment.

“I’ve heard that before, and we’ve yet to see a check in the mail,” Hutchenrider said.

She has a box of ink cartridges that she has been ready to ship out for a while, but she did not want to send them to Staples without having received a check for the first shipment. After a process she referred to as a “nightmare,” Hutchenrider said she has now been talking to other schools -- the next batch of cartridges will definitely be headed to another recycling program.